How to fix uneven patio furniture legs with a wine cork

Don't worry if you lose the rubber thingy on the bottom of a patio chair leg. Try this trick instead. (Photo: Robin Shreeves)

My outdoor furniture came with screw extenders on the bottom of the chair and table legs to even out the legs. One of the extenders on a chair disappeared at some point and that chair has been wobbly for a while.

On Pinterest, I saw a simple fix for the problem using wine cork, so I gave it a try. I’m not sure how permanent this fix will be, but I think it will hold for my weekend entertaining.

Here’s what I needed to make my patio chair stop wobbling.

A wine cork

An appropriate knife to cut through the cork

A cutting board

Strong glue

The process is easy. All you have to do to is cut a disk from the cork that’s the appropriate length to even out the furniture legs.

This is the bottom of the chair leg with the screw extender missing. (Sorry about the blurriness. I didn’t realize the leg was blurry in the photo until after the project was finished.) I’m including the photo so you can see that there is a hole in the bottom of the leg where the screw extender would go that could be raised or lowered to even out the legs.

I’m a make-do kind of girl, so while there is probably a better knife for cutting the cork, this was what I found on the tool bench. It’s a small dry wall saw. It did the trick. What you see there is the first disk I cut, but it wasn’t the right height. Then I realized there was a very easy way to get the cork to the right height. Take a look at the next photo.

I put the cork down on the ground right next to the leg and placed the knife right under the leg. With the knife, I put a small knick in the cork at the correct height. Then, I cut the cork again, and the height was almost perfect. There was still a slight wobble after I attached the cork with strong glue, but I was able to slightly adjust one of the screw extenders on another leg to get it just perfect.

This is the end result. If I wanted to, I could take a little black paint and paint the cork so it wouldn’t be so obvious, but I don’t know if I have them time to do that before my guests come tonight.

I don’t know how long the cork will stay on there, but for tonight, whoever sits in that chair won’t be wobbling back and forth.

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